by Jenna Black
“Don’t you dare!” she commanded, striding forward and snatching the bottle out of his hand so quickly he didn’t even think to resist.
Agnes’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head, and Nate would have laughed if Nadia hadn’t gotten up in his face. She held the bottle out to Agnes without taking her eyes off him. It was whiskey, Nate noted absently, though he didn’t recognize the brand name. Agnes bit her lip and approached like she was crossing a minefield, but she took the bottle from Nadia and then hastily backed up a couple of steps.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Nadia asked as she reached for his throat. Actually, she was reaching for the buttons on his collar, but it felt rather like a stranglehold. “Agnes and I have been looking all over for you. The service is about to begin.” She gave the collar a harder tug than necessary for buttoning purposes.
“I’m not going,” he said, twisting away from her hands. “Now give me back the bottle and leave me in peace.”
He was good at hiding his feelings in public, had had to do it for as long as he could remember. But there was no way he could put his public face on right now. Not after the bombshell his father had just dropped on him. Not after looking into Dorothy’s smirking face and seeing his future laid out plain and clear. Whether she was the Chairman’s daughter or not—and Nate refused to admit she was—she would be accepted by the public as such because the Chairman said so. Hell, the people of Paxco would probably throw a big party when his father disinherited him in favor of Dorothy. The original Nate Hayes had been popular, a true media darling. His Replica, not so much.
“What is wrong with you?” Nadia asked, reaching for his collar again. “You can’t cause a scene at your own mother’s funeral. I don’t care what issues you had with her.”
Nate caught her wrists and held her off. “This has nothing to do with her.”
What had happened to his life? Only a couple precious weeks ago, he’d been engaged to his best friend. He’d had a live-in—albeit secret—boyfriend whom he loved. And he had been one hundred percent secure in the knowledge that he would one day be the Chairman of Paxco.
Yes, he’d been a crappy heir. He’d avoided work like the plague and made it clear to everyone that he had little interest in learning how to play his future role. He’d neglected paperwork, dozed off in meetings, been rude to people he should have been diplomatic with. But he was eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake. He had decades before he expected to become Chairman, and he’d known there would be plenty of time to learn everything he needed to know. And even if they’d been a bit vague and amorphous, he’d had plans for his state. Plans to make it a better place. Plans to improve the quality of life among Basement-dwellers, like Kurt. Plans to give them more opportunities to join mainstream society, while putting protections in place for those who couldn’t. Plans to winnow out those in the government—and especially in the security department—who abused their power.
He would be a difference-maker. Someday in the future, when he was ready to settle down and put his mind to it.
And now, his father could make it all go away with a snap of his fingers. He’d already destroyed Nate’s dreams of a happy home life, with Nadia as the kind and understanding wife who would look the other way and not complain about his relationship with Kurt. How long before he couldn’t resist ruining the rest of it, too?
“What has your father done now?” Nadia asked him, her brow furrowed with worry.
Leave it to Nadia to home in on the problem without any input from him.
“Let’s go somewhere more private to talk,” he said, losing some of his head of steam. He met Nadia’s eyes and was sure she saw the hint of panic in his. “I can’t go out there,” he said, waving vaguely in the direction of the porch. “I’m losing it, Nadia.”
She slipped her hand into his and gave it a squeeze, her eyes full of kindness and concern. “Okay. Let’s talk.”
He nodded and started to guide her toward another little parlor room he’d noticed. Another room with a door that could be closed. She moved with him, but looked over her shoulder and waved.
“Come on, Agnes,” she said.
Nate swallowed the first couple of responses that came to mind. Nadia was right, and he’d been treating Agnes horribly. He didn’t think anything on earth could persuade him to like the girl, but that didn’t mean he had the right to be cruel to her. So he went with his third response, which was far less caustic than his knee-jerk ones.
“I really need to talk to you alone.”
“Tough,” was Nadia’s tart reply. “We’re not sending Agnes out to the service by herself, and we’re not leaving her holding the bag if someone comes looking for us. So she’s coming with us. Now come on, Agnes.”
She waved to Agnes again, and the girl reluctantly came closer. Nate didn’t want this virtual stranger intruding on his time with Nadia, nor did he want her to see him falling apart at the seams as he feared he might. But he didn’t have the energy to fight a battle he knew he wouldn’t win, so he sighed and started off toward the parlor again.
“Make sure you bring the whiskey,” he called to Agnes over his shoulder.
Agnes, of course, didn’t answer, but he heard the soft tap of her shoes on the wooden floor of the hall, so he knew she was following. Once upon a time, he’d been fairly good at getting Nadia to agree with him, even when he knew she didn’t really agree. She hadn’t been a pushover, exactly, but he’d always known which buttons to push. Those buttons didn’t work anymore, and if she was dead set on Agnes coming along, then Agnes was coming along.
Outside, the drizzle had picked up and become a steady rain, drumming on the windows. The parlor Nate led the girls into would have been dismal on a bright and cheery day, the furniture dark, fussy, and old-fashioned. On this gray and gloomy day, the place was positively depressing. Or maybe that was just Nate’s mood. They certainly went together nicely. He closed the parlor door. Anyone who came looking for him would have no trouble finding him, but he doubted his father would hesitate to start the service without him there, and once it started, no one was going to come looking.
Nadia and Agnes sat together on a floral-upholstered sofa with spindly legs, but Nate was too agitated to sit. Agnes was still holding the whiskey bottle, probably unsure what to do with it. He wanted to take it from her, more because he wanted something to do with his hands than because he wanted to drink, but Nadia’s forbidding stare made him think twice.
“So, what’s happened now?” Nadia prompted.
He hated that he had to talk about this with Agnes in the room. Even when she’d disapproved of him, Nadia had always been easy to talk to. They’d known each other so long, been each other’s friends for so long … He was trying not to think of Agnes as the enemy anymore, but she certainly wasn’t a friend.
Soon, everyone, friend and foe, is going to know about this, he reasoned with himself. No doubt the Chairman had already been making discreet introductions from the moment he had arrived.
His voice halting as though every word were being dragged out of him by force, he told the girls everything he knew—which, granted, was very little—about his alleged half-sister. Neither Nadia nor Agnes interrupted him, even when his pauses became uncomfortably long. They sat side by side, quietly listening, and Nate was struck for the millionth time by the contrast between them. Nadia, beautiful and tastefully dressed, sat up straight and proud, her eyes soft with sympathy as she looked him straight in the face. Agnes, plain and with no fashion sense whatsoever, sat slumped with her shoulders slightly hunched, her gaze focused either on the floor or at something across the room, never at his face. He doubted she was much more comfortable sitting in on this conversation than he was having it in front of her.
There was a long silence after he’d finished telling them about Dorothy. He’d seen Agnes start when he mentioned his worry that Dorothy would one day be named heir, and he wondered if by some miracle she was now reconsideri
ng the engagement. It wasn’t like he’d made a great impression on her as potential husband material if he didn’t come with guaranteed rank, status, and money. She chewed her lip and frowned, looking lost in thought.
“I don’t know what to say,” Nadia said in a small voice, shaking her head.
Nate shrugged. “There’s nothing to say. If my dad wants to pretend this girl is his daughter, who’s going to stop him?”
He gave Nadia his most challenging stare, daring her to argue that Dorothy really was the Chairman’s daughter. But, to his utter shock, it wasn’t Nadia who spoke, it was Agnes.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Agnes said, her voice even softer than Nadia’s had been.
Nadia turned to her, obviously as surprised as Nate that she’d spoken up. Nate couldn’t remember a time when Agnes had spoken without being spoken to first. She surprised him yet again by raising the whiskey bottle she still held to her lips and taking a swift swig.
“What doesn’t make sense?” Nadia asked.
Agnes grimaced at the taste of the whiskey, setting the bottle down on the coffee table. She looked back and forth between Nadia and Nate as if uncertain it was all right for her to speak.
“Go on,” Nate urged, trying to keep his voice gentle.
Agnes swallowed hard and looked at him, though her gaze kept darting sideways, as if she couldn’t quite stand to meet his eyes for more than a second at a time.
“Even though you’re still the legal heir,” she said, “your stock goes down when people discover another potential heir is out there.”
Nate frowned in confusion, but Nadia understood right away what Agnes meant. “Your stock in the marriage market,” she said, and Agnes nodded. Agnes looked at her as if hoping Nadia would continue the thought, but Nadia smiled softly and waited.
Agnes licked her lips and did that not-quite-meeting-his-eyes thing again. “Your prime value right now is that you’re the undisputed Chairman Heir. That’s why my father wants this engagement so badly, even though he’s … uneasy about marrying me to a Replica. He expects his grandchild to be the Chairman of Paxco someday.”
Nate tried very hard not to shudder or make a face at the idea of providing Chairman Belinski with a grandchild. The idea of trying to perform his conjugal duties with Nadia was bad enough, but he’d never be able to overcome his distaste enough to do it with Agnes.
“There’s already a comfortable alliance between our states,” Agnes continued. “We have good trade agreements with each other, and there are very few strings attached. But if you and I marry, the balance of power between our states will change. We won’t be quite so independent anymore, and we’ll lose some of our more lucrative trade agreements with states that are your rivals. If the next heir to Paxco is going to be a Belinski, then the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but if not…” Agnes shrugged. “The arrangement heavily favors Paxco under those circumstances, and my father might decide he can make better use of me.”
“By marrying you to that marketing director you told me about?” Nate asked incredulously. The idea that a man like that would make for a more favorable marriage prospect than Nate seemed almost insulting.
“It would be a financially advantageous match,” Agnes said, “and would come with none of the same strings. So why would your father announce the existence of another potential heir now, of all times? If he’d waited just one more week, I’d have signed the papers to make our engagement legally binding and it would have been nearly impossible for Synchrony to back out.”
Nate stared at Agnes in mute astonishment. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her string so many words together before. And somehow, it had never quite occurred to him that Paxco might be getting the better out of their marriage arrangement. He’d focused on the relative size and wealth of their two states—and on Agnes’s lack of personal charms—and decided Agnes was marrying above herself. He had never considered that in marrying above herself, Agnes might have been making her state into a vassal of Paxco, and that that might not be so advantageous for Synchrony. Never considered that Chairman Belinski might have been anything other than ecstatic about the match.
Maybe if he’d paid more attention to business and politics, instead of putting it all off until “later,” he wouldn’t be standing there gaping like an idiot.
Nadia was not similarly surprised by Agnes’s assessment, but then she’d always been more politically aware than he.
“You’re right,” she told Agnes, nodding while her frown announced she was trying to figure out the mystery. “The timing is very strange. It seems like a serious blunder. But Chairman Hayes doesn’t make blunders. Perhaps Dorothy or her mother have been putting pressure on him to bring her out in public.”
Nate dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. “First of all, you know from personal experience how hard it is to put pressure on him.” He immediately wished he could take the words back, even before he saw Nadia’s warning look and the spark of interest in Agnes’s usually dull eyes. He couldn’t afford to be careless with his words. Agnes was shy, not stupid, although before now he’d been too hostile to notice.
“Besides, Dorothy can’t really put pressure on him because she isn’t really his daughter. Blackmail doesn’t work unless you actually have something.”
Once again, he braced himself for Nadia to argue about Dorothy’s paternity, and once again, she didn’t.
“Your father would hardly cave in to blackmail just to keep the world from knowing about an illegitimate child,” she said. “And it wouldn’t explain the timing, unless someone is hoping to sabotage the marriage arrangement.”
“No one knows about it yet,” Agnes pointed out. “No one who doesn’t want it to happen, at least.”
“Do you believe me?” Nate asked Nadia. “When I say Dorothy is an impostor?”
“Yes,” Nadia said, without hesitation.
The relief that flooded him made him feel weak in the knees, and he finally decided it was time to sit down. He moved over to an armchair and practically collapsed into it.
“If Dorothy were the real thing,” she continued, “your father would have been holding her over your head from the moment you were old enough to understand what you stood to lose.”
“Exactly!” Nate exclaimed, sitting up straight once again. He realized that, deep down inside, he’d worried his reasoning had been nothing but some form of denial, but hearing Nadia echo his own thoughts made it seem less outlandish.
“If she’s not his daughter,” Agnes asked tentatively, “then who is she?”
“I’m going to find out,” he said, though he had no idea how. He wished like hell Nadia’s family would let her come home, would let the two of them put their heads together to solve the mystery. Together, they’d been able to find Kurt, despite Kurt’s vehement desire not to be found, but Nate could take very little credit for their success. Nadia, with her cool head and her sharp mind, had been the brains of the operation. He needed her if he was going to figure out who Dorothy was—and prove that she wasn’t the Chairman’s daughter.
“Maybe Agnes can help you,” Nadia suggested.
Nate hoped his face didn’t look as ridiculous as Agnes’s when his jaw dropped and his eyebrows climbed, but he suspected it did.
Nadia turned to Agnes. “You immediately figured out the irregularity of the Chairman introducing Dorothy today. You obviously have a head for the twists and turns of politics.” She flashed Nate a rueful smile, and he felt the heat rise in his neck. As the Chairman Heir of the most powerful of the Corporate States, he should have been the one to understand the implications at the drop of a hat. “And because you’re so quiet and unobtrusive, I bet people would say things around you that they wouldn’t say around Nate.”
Agnes gave an undignified snort. “Quiet and unobtrusive?”
Nadia shrugged. “Well, you are.” It was Agnes’s turn to be on the receiving end of one of Nadia’s knowing looks. “Tell me you don’t spend a lot of time qu
ietly listening to other people’s conversations.”
Agnes’s familiar mottled blush gave her away. To his surprise, Nate found himself squirming in his chair, almost as uncomfortable as Agnes.
“You don’t have to help me,” he mumbled, taking a page from her book and staring at his shoes. “I’ve treated you like shit.” Now it was his own turn to blush, because that was not the kind of language to use when speaking to an Executive girl. Agnes was not Nadia, and he couldn’t allow himself to get so relaxed with her. “Sorry.”
“For treating me like shit? Or for swearing?”
Blinking in surprise, Nate looked up and saw the faintest of smiles on Agnes’s face. Nadia was grinning like a proud mama. Maybe she was right and there was a personality under Agnes’s bland exterior.
“Both.”
He couldn’t tell from the expression on her face whether his apology was accepted or not. “I’ll see what I can find out about Dorothy. If there’s a chance she could be named Chairman Heir…”
She let her voice trail off, but Nate had no trouble filling in the blanks, especially when she couldn’t hide the hope in her voice. He’d more than satisfied his initial aim to make her dislike him, and the thought that she might not have to marry him after all had her heart all aflutter.
Outside the parlor, there was a swell of sound—the porch door swinging open, footsteps, murmuring voices.
The service was over, and Nate had missed the whole thing.